What Is … Common Law?
March 25th, 2009
Common Law is a system of law that depends on previous judicial judgements or precedents to establish law.
By way of contrast, statutory law creates law with the successful statutes of a legislative body and regulatory law utilizes requirements and obligations handed down by members of the executive branch to form law. Consitutional law predicates its laws upon the articles of the Constitution.
A governing principle of common law is stare decisis which in short means that if the components of a case are materially the same as a previously decided case then a similar result must be reached.
